The question arises quite naturally. To correctly meet events
with definite tactics, we must understand them correctly. How,
then, are we to understand the Cadet withdrawal?

Spite? Disagreement in principle over the Ukraine? Of course
not. It would be ridiculous to suspect the Cadets of loyalty to
principles, or the bourgeoisie of the ability to do something
out of spite.

The Cadet withdrawal can only be understood as a calculated
move. What are their calculations?

To govern a country which has carried out a major revolution
and is still in a state of unrest, and to govern it during a
world-wide imperialist war, you need the initiative and scope of
a truly revolutionary class—massively courageous,
historically great, wholeheartedly enthusiastic. Either you
suppress this class by force, as the Cadets have been preaching
for some time, since May 6 in fact, or you entrust your self to
its leadership. Either you are in alliance with imperialist
capital, then you must take the offensive, you must be an
obedient servant of capital, you must sell yourself to it, you
must throw overboard the utopian ideas of abolishing landed
property without compensation (see Birzhevka for Lvov’s
speeches against Chernov’s programme); or you are against
imperialist capital, then you must immediately propose precise
peace terms to all nations, because they have all been exhausted
by the war, you must dare to raise, and be able to raise, the
banner of world proletarian revolution against capital, and to
do so not in words but in deeds, to
further the revolution with the greatest determination in Russia
herself.

The Cadets are wily businessmen in trade, in finance, in
safeguarding capital, as well as in politics. They have
correctly taken into account the fact that the situation is
objectively a revolutionary one. They agree to reforms
and
enjoy sharing power with the reformists, the Tseretelis and
Chernovs. But reforms will not help. There is no way
out of
the crisis, the war and economic disruption, through reforms.

From their class point of view, from the imperialist exploiters’
point of view, the Cadets have calculated correctly. They seem
to say: “By withdrawing, we present an ultimatum. We know
that at present the Tseretelis and Chernovs do not trust the
truly revolutionary class, that at present they do not want to
conduct a truly revolutionary policy. Let’s frighten them. To be
without the Cadets means being without the ’aid’ of world-wide
Anglo-American capital, means raising the banner of revolution
against the latter as well. The Tseretelis and Chernovs
wouldn’t do that, they wouldn’t dare! They will give in to us!

“If not, then even if a revolution against capital starts,
it will fail and we shall come back.”

That is how the Cadets calculate. We repeat: from the point of
view of the exploiting class, their calculations are correct.

Were the Tseretelis and Chernovs to take the point of view of
the exploited class and not that of the vacillating petty
bourgeoisie, they would reply to the Cadets’ correct
calculations by correct adherence to the revolutionary
proletariat’s policy.

Notes

[1]On July 2 (15), hearing of the miscarriage of the Juno offensive,
the Cadet Ministers Shingaryov, Manuilov and Shakhovskoi resigned
from the coalition Provisional Government on the pretext that
they disagreed with the government’s stand on the Ukrainian
question. In a declaration to the Ukrainian Central Rada, the
Provisional Government had promised to appoint by mutual
agreement a General Secretariat to administer the Ukraine, while

the Cadets insisted that the Ukrainian question be settled solely
by the Constituent Assembly.

The true reason for the Cadets’ resignation was their desire
to provoke a government crisis with an eye to bringing pressure
to bear on the “socialist” Ministers and securing their consent to
a Cadet counter-revolutionary programme: the disarming of the
Red Guards, withdrawal of the revolutionary troops from
Petrograd, and prohibition of the Bolshevik Party.